It may someday be said that the 21st century began on Sept. 11, 2001. That will be true if the attacks turn out to be harbingers of a new, epochal war and the extreme change in the constitutional order that follows such a war. Al-Qaeda, the group responsible for the attacks that day, represents a new and profoundly dangerous kind of organization--one that might be called a "virtual state." The virtual state has many of the characteristics of other states (a trained standing army and intelligence cadre; a treasury and a source of revenue; a civil service and even a rudimentary...
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